I play Commander every week in an online group using Tabletop Simulator. In recent months we've started to put more effort into setting a clearer direction for the power level of the games we play. For a long time we were all loosey goosey about it, but now we are planning each week with some kind of target. Usually it's just mid-power, high-power or cEDH, and we once had a week where we were simply given a target decklist to try to match.

I recently picked a week where we would all try to build a deck or pick an existing deck that would be appropriate to play in a LOW powered game. You might not think that would be a challenge, but players used to throwing staples, combos and powerful cards into their decks might find themselves struggling to build a genuinely low powered deck.

There are lots of ways to tone down your deckbuilding and for today's column I'd like to share a list where I used a bunch of those methods. I largely avoided running staples. I tried to avoid expensive cards. I even picked the weakest color pairing I could think of and I picked a commander from Ravnica Remastered that uses a keyword that is relatively weak in EDH. It was my bright idea to build and play low powered decks so I really wanted to avoid being the strongest deck at the table.

Aurelia, Exemplar of Justice is a 4-mana legendary flying Angel in Boros colors. She's got a meager 2 power and 5 toughness, but there's a reason for that: she has mentor.

Mentor is a keyword that is OK in some 1v1 formats, but is pretty weak in Commander. When a creature with mentor attacks, you put a +1/+1 counter on target attacking creature with lesser power. That's fine in a format where you're trying to inflict 20 damage on a single opponent, but when you double life totals and add two more opponents, it gets a lot worse.

The question I decided to try to answer with this deck is if an Aurelia Boros Mentor deck is actually playable in Commander. I know it's not great, but I also like to champion the idea that every deck is playable at the right table. For today's deck, the right table should absolutely be a low powered table. Before I get to the game and how the deck performed, let me share a little of what I put into this low budget (below $100) deck.

Mentor

Mentor has a Storm Scale of 6. The Storm Scale is a ranking from 1 to 10 of how likely it is that a game mechanic will be reprinted in a future Standard-legal set. From what I could find online that means that Mentor was marginally unsuccessful: functional, but rarely making interesting gameplay patterns.

Aurelia is actually well designed to support mentor. When she attacks, she can give up to one target creature +2/+0 along with trample if it's red and vigilance if it's White. That +2 power boost helps you get around the problem that you might run out of creatures with lesser power. The problem in commander is that little creatures don't often survive being sent into battle at your average EDH table. Folks just like to play big scary creatures in this format.

I decided to start with every Red and White card I could find with the mentor keyword. I ended up running a full dozen creatures with mentor. Most aren't worth a deep dive, but a few are notable.

Parhelion Patrol is a White Human Knight with that wonderful combination of flying and vigilance, meaning I should be able to safely attack every turn and will still have a blocker. Legion Warboss is a Goblin Soldier who helps to solve the problem of having enough small creatures for a mentor strategy to actually work. At the beginning of combat on my turn I'll create a hasty 1/1 Red Goblin creature token. The only downside is that it will have to attack every turn, but a deck built around mentor wants to go to combat so that's OK.

Most of the rest of the creatures with mentor are pretty boring, and some don't have any other abilities at all. Tajic, Legion's Edge is an exception and is strong enough to be an alternative commander for the deck. This three mana 3/2 Human Soldier has haste, mentor, and will prevent all noncombat damage that would be dealt to other creatures I control. Tajic can even give himself first strike until end of turn for a Red and White mana.

With Tajic at the helm, I'd be tempted to lean into damage-based boardwipes, which might be enough to make a deck like this good. With Aurelia, Exemplar of Justice at the helm, and aiming for a low-powered game, I chose to leave my Blasphemous Act and other wraths out of this list. If you wanted to build this deck you should absolutely run mass removal, and you should also throw in more ways to protect your board.

Boros Creatures

My next step was to decide whether there was a subtheme to throw into the list. Aurelia can give target red and White creature +2/+0, trample and vigilance, so running a few creatures with both of my commander's colors felt like a decent plan.

If I were aiming for mid or high-power I'd have looked at staples like Gisela, Blade of Goldnight and Aurelia, the Warleader, but for low power I knew I'd be playing some jankier cards.

Baird, Argivian Recruiter is a Human Soldier who will reward me for putting +1/+1 counters on my guys. At the beginning of my end step, if I control a creature with power greater than its base power, I'll create a 1/1 White Soldier creature token. I'm also running Assemble the Legion and Loyal Apprentice as additional token generators.

Spitemare and Boros Reckoner are great blockers. I figured a low-powered game might have more combat than a higher powered game. These two creatures will deal damage when they are dealt damage, so if one of them blocks a 20/20, it will let me push out 20 damage - even if my creature was dealt lethal damage!

Balefire Liege is a member of the Liege cycle, a set of creatures across every color pairing that give an anthem effect based upon their color identity. This one gives +1/+1 to my Red creatures and +1/+1 to my White creatures, and will let me deal 3 damage when I play a Red spell and gain 3 life when I play a White spell. Those last two are the sorts of triggers I often miss, but this is still a solid addition to the deck.

Blade Historian is a Human Cleric who will give attacking creatures I control double strike. It can't help me with blocking, so I'll probably keep it in my hand until I have a good reason to play it out and swing some major damage at somebody.

My last multicolored creature is perfect for this deck. Iroas, God of Victory will give my creatures menace and will prevent all damage to attacking creatures I control. I want to go to combat. I want my creatures to survive combat. Iroas will let me do that without having to worry about losing creatures to damage from being blocked. If it weren't a regular card in precon EDH decks I might have left it out, but this God should put in work in Aurelia if it ever sees the battlefield.

Tricks and Angels

Rounding out this list I knew I probably wasn't going to be winning games through overwhelming my opponents on the battlefield. Mentor just doesn't give you enough of an advantage in a multiplayer environment to make it a great strategy. That meant I'd need to have a few tricks up my sleeve. I love tricks, or more specifically, combat tricks, so this deck was a good excuse to run them.

I decided to start with a few fog effects. Dawn Charm is a modal card that will let me prevent combat damage, regenerate target creature or counter target spell that targets me. I'm also running Ethereal Haze, but left out Holy Day for some reason. I probably should have run all three, as I do love being able to neuter an alpha strike with a well-timed fog. If I have a board and my opponent got greedy, I might even be able to win on the crackback.

I'm running a second modal card, Boros Charm, which can deal 4 damage to target creature or planeswalker, make my permanents indestructible, or give target creature double strike until end of turn. My favorite Boros combat trick might be Deflecting Palm. That 2 mana instant will let me prevent one source of damage and redirect it at that source's controller. It's a great answer to a ridiculously large creature and it's always fun to be able to tell someone "you did this to yourself".

Master Warcraft is my last combat trick and it's a doozy. I even had to check to make sure it wasn't secretly a $20 card because I'm always impressed by how much it can change a game's direction. This four-mana instant can only be cast before attackers are declared. If it resolves, you get to choose which creatures attack, which creatures block, and how they block. With the right board in the late game you can use someone's army to wipe out a third player and leave the attacking player with zero blockers. This card wins games, or at least it can in the right situations.

I'm running some removal, but left out a few cards I probably should have run, like Wing Shards, which will have target player sacrifice an attacking creature, and has storm so it will get copied for each spell cast before it this turn.

I ended up deciding to have my final subtheme be Angels.

I could easily have gone with a Soldier subtheme, but this first creature is both an Angel and a Soldier. This flyer will trigger whenever another creature with power 2 or less enters the battlefield, putting two +1/+1 counters on it. Angels are expensive and Boros doesn't have a ton of ramp in its colors, so Herald of War made sense to run. It's a 3/3 Angel that gets a +1/+1 counter when it attacks. Angel and Human spells I cast cost 1 less to cast for each counter on Herald of War.

It's not easy to find Angels in Red that are worth running, even in a low-power deck, but Flameblade Angel made the cut. It's got a hefty 6-mana casting cost, but I'll get a 4/4 flyer with a neat ability. Whenever a source an opponent controls deals damage to me or a permanent I control, I can have Flameblade Angel deal 1 damage to that source's controller. That's not great, but it's very good in the right situation.

My last Angel is Avacyn. No, not the good Avacyn. I'm running Archangel Avacyn, a flip card from Shadows of Innistrad. This 4/4 Angel has flash, flying and vigilance, and when it enters the battlefield it will make my creatures indestructible until end of turn. I'm terrible at holding back flash creatures, but having open mana and Archangel Avacyn in my hand could let me dodge a boardwipe so long as the wrath doesn't exile or force me to sacrifice my creatures.

When a non-Angel creature I control dies, I'll transform Archangel Avacyn into Avacyn, the Purifier at the beginning of the next upkeep. Avacyn, the Purifier is a 6/5 flying Angel that will push out 3 damage to each other creature and each opponent when it transforms. That might wipe out my own creatures but it's still a way to clear the field if things are getting out of hand and creatures are generally small.

Mentor is so Meek

I really embraced the challenge of building a low powered deck with this build, and while you might use it as a starting point for a deck, you probably would want to make a lot of changes. Even if you were to run every mentor card you could get your hands on, you might still want to run more evasive small creatures, along with more card draw, removal and boardwipes. Those are the sorts of things (draw, removal and boardwipes) that push a deck's power level up, so I was making objectively poor choices in terms of the deck's competitiveness.

Aurelia Value | Commander | Stephen Johnson

• Commander (1)
• 1 Aurelia, Exemplar of Justice

• Creatures (35)
• 1 Abzan Falconer
• 1 Angelic Cub
• 1 Archangel Avacyn
• 1 Baird, Argivian Recruiter
• 1 Balefire Liege
• 1 Barging Sergeant
• 1 Blade Historian
• 1 Blade Instructor
• 1 Boros Challenger
• 1 Boros Reckoner
• 1 Fearless Fledgling
• 1 Flameblade Angel
• 1 Goblin Banneret
• 1 Gold Myr
• 1 Hammer Dropper
• 1 Herald of War
• 1 Iroas, God of Victory
• 1 Iron Myr
• 1 Legion Warboss
• 1 Light of the Legion
• 1 Lightwalker
• 1 Loran of the Third Path
• 1 Loyal Apprentice
• 1 Magus of the Wheel
• 1 Parhelion Patrol
• 1 Serra Redeemer
• 1 Shinewend
• 1 Solemn Simulacrum
• 1 Spitemare
• 1 Sunhome Stalwart
• 1 Sunscorch Regent
• 1 Tajic, Legion's Edge
• 1 Truefire Captain
• 1 Twilight Drover
• 1 Wojek Bodyguard

• Instants (14)
• 1 Abrade
• 1 Boros Charm
• 1 Dawn Charm
• 1 Deflecting Palm
• 1 Ethereal Haze
• 1 Generous Gift
• 1 Immolating Glare
• 1 Lightning Strike
• 1 Master Warcraft
• 1 Path to Exile
• 1 Swords to Plowshares
• 1 Valorous Stance
• 1 Wear // Tear
• 1 Your Temple is Under Attack

• Sorceries (5)
• 1 Cut a Deal
• 1 Reckless Impulse
• 1 Secret Rendezvous
• 1 Taunt from the Rampart
• 1 Wrenn's Resolve

• Enchantments (2)
• 1 Assemble the Legion
• 1 Seal Away

• Artifacts (4)
• 1 Arcane Signet
• 1 Boros Signet
• 1 Sol Ring
• 1 Wayfarer's Bauble

• Lands (39)
• 15 Mountain
• 15 Plains
• 1 Bonders' Enclave
• 1 Boros Garrison
• 1 Boros Guildgate
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Exotic Orchard
• 1 Rogue's Passage
• 1 Slayers' Stronghold
• 1 Sunhome, Fortress of the Legion
• 1 Temple of Triumph

Buy This Deck Export text

This is a very low budget deck, so one of the first things you might look at is running some better cards. You might well keep Aurelia as your only card with mentor and lean into a tongue-in-cheek mentor deck with Monastery Mentor, Mentor of the Meek, Harsh Mentor, and even less well-known cards like Bloodmark Mentor, Frillscare Mentor and Keensight Mentor. You could even go crazy and run Proud Mentor, Resplendent Mentor, Seven-Tail Mentor, and the Boros Spirit Advisor Stonebound Mentor.

I might draw the line at running creatures with Tormentor in the card name, but then again, if I'm being cute with my theme, why not be really cute? It would be a very different deck than today's list, but it would be fun.

Early Results

I was able to play this deck on the aforementioned "low power night" in our Tabletop Simulator group. I wasn't optimistic going in, as I suspected some or all of my tablemates would have trouble building low-powered decks. My fears were somewhat well founded. My deck didn't do much, though looking at a single game is again not a great way to evaluate a deck.

The game saw me on Aurelia, a player on Vorel of the Hull Clade (charge counter themed), a player on Leori, Sparktouched Hunter (Jeskai superfriends), and a player on a 5/c voting deck with Sisay, Weatherlight Captain as the commander so they could run every voting card in the format.

The Vorel player got out ahead quickly, not in terms of creatures but in terms of utility artifacts. Her field was just littered with trinkets and it became clear from the synergy in the cards on her battlefield that she was at a higher power level. In her defense, she had misunderstood some feedback from a fellow player and thought she had been told her list was low power. By the time she had The Millennium Calendar and an Unwinding Clock on the field and we were all calculating how soon she'd be winning the game, we were forced to use player removal to stop her from winning. I had removed a Seedborn Muse earlier, and I know very well how things would have gone if her commander and all of her untappers had been out.

The Leori, Sparktouched Hunter player probably ate more removal than she deserved, but nobody wanted to see a planeswalker deck spin out of control. She got an Onakke Oathkeeper out to protect her planeswalkers, at one point used a Spark Double to make a copy of Jace, Mirror Mage, and got a few chances to use Leori to copy planeswalker activations. I even saw a Chain Veil get discarded at one point, but the table never really let her go crazy.

You might think the Sisay, Weatherlight Captain player would have easily won the game with such a powerful card in the command zone. You'd be right, but not for the reason you think. Sisay did win, possibly because we had to expend too many resources to stop Vorel, but the reason was just that when you go all in on something and that something includes a bunch of powerful cards, you're probably going to do OK.

The Sisay player had us voting constantly and had a decent number of strong cards in his deck. Cyclonic Rift made an appearance, though the Sisay pilot was good enough to not overload it and only played it at sorcery speed. Expropriate and Plea for Power were both in the list, but they never took any extra turns. Selvala's Stampede got played twice, and between the two castings gave them the advantage that probably ended up winning them the game.

For my part, Aurelia never really got rolling. I saw way more interaction than I'd expect in a low powered game, and I struggled to maintain much of a boardstate. I was able to deal the killing blow on the Vorel player by flashing in Archangel Avacyn on an end step and playing Blade Historian on my turn to give her double strike, but that was probably the high point for me.

In the end, it felt like I was the only one playing a low powered deck at a mid-powered table, but it's entirely possible the Leori player felt the same way. The game did reinforce in my mind the idea that if you go heavily enough in one direction, that focus is going to push up your power level if that direction is a good one.

The Vorel player had a heavy focus on untappers and things that would be incredibly helpful if not game-winning if they were able to be tapped enough times. The Sisay player had a heavy focus on cards that provided the opportunity to vote, along with ways to get extra votes. The Leori player probably could have spun out of control with more planeswalkers than we'd be able to deal with if she had not been trying to build a low powered deck.

My choice to go for a weak keyword as my focus was certainly my undoing, but it was a fun game for the most part.

I was able to use the mentor keyword... once, well after the outcome was pretty much determined. I was also able to cast an Ethereal Haze to survive an alpha strike, but my very capable tablemate had the presence of mind to cast some removal so I lost my board before going to combat. If they hadn't done that, I might have been able to fog and kill them on the crackback.

It's not fun to be the lowest power deck at a table. The Leori player actually conceded when it felt pretty clear that the writing was on the wall and the Sisay player had us. If they had stayed in, the reality is that I had a stack of 6 lands at the top of my library (I checked after the game) so I wasn't about to draw into anything helpful. Sometimes that's how it goes.

Final Thoughts

I don't think I'm going to be suggesting a low-powered game again any time soon, but I am glad that I did. It was a healthy reminder that my current playgroup isn't really interested in playing bad cards and low powered commanders and is really going to be happier in a mid-powered or more likely a high-powered game.

I am still a staunch defender of the concept that every deck is playable... at the right table.

Finding a table or a playgroup that is playing at a power level to match a deck like today's might be a challenge. If you are into more casual, budget-friendly decks and longer games, I hope you are able to find those games. They are fun, and full of surprises, but in today's EDH it can be difficult to find players who aren't pushing to squeeze as much synergy or value into whatever budget or power level they are being asked to play at.

It's rare for me to parade out a deck like today's so if you're still with me and you think this is a real stinker - I can't argue with you. I hope you found some value in the story of why I built it and how it played out, if only as a warning that it might not be a lot of fun if you're used to building synergistic decks with significantly higher budgets.

That's all I've got for today. Thanks for reading and I'll see you next week.